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"It's easier in Europe. There are far more marriages there that are openly an arrangement than there are here. I know so many European couples where neither has been faithful year after year after year, and then strangely, when one of them dies, the other one is devastated, finished — it's the end. Because it was really love. But they define it differently. It's harder for us [in the US]. We believe in fidelity even if we can't achieve it."

His new movie, Closer, is based on the award-winning play by Patrick Marber, who has also written the screenplay. Adultery is a fascinating topic and one that is explored with scrupulous honesty in the film. It is a study of modern relationships and it's not surprising that Nichols was drawn to the material. Like Carnal Knowledge, it examines the nature of casual betrayal, intense attraction, and the uncertainty of love and sex. The four characters (two couples played by Jude Law, Julia Roberts, Clive Owen and Natalie Portman) are wounded and at times unlikable, but always relatable-to, in spite of — and often because of — the lies that they tell. "My wife said that it was about how people have to remember the importance of lying in love. You have to be willing to lie sometimes." The very nature and degree of deceit is what intrigues Nichols.

"It's an infinitely complicated and insoluble subject, because there are as many variations as there are couples. Feelings can be more of a betrayal than acts. And what do you say about that? 'I never touched X, but I had certain feelings for them?' It's all about what people have promised each other. But two people hear different things, and that's where the trouble starts." He raises a quizzical eyebrow.

"Over and over, people tell me things about their mate and I'm always stunned. I think, don't you know that's the beginning of separating? That if you tell somebody outside anything at all about the person you love, that it's the beginning of the end? You can't. Lots of people don't know that, so what is betrayal? Is it talking at all to anyone about the person you love? I'd say so."

Sawyer is Nichols's fourth wife. From his second marriage, to Margo Callas, he has a daughter, Daisy, and from his third, to Annabel Davis-Goff, the Anglo-Irish novelist, he has two other children: Max and Jenny.

What's intriguing is that, while Closer deals with the uncontrollable narrative of love, Nichols himself still believes there is such a thing as finding the one person who is enough, but admits he didn't discover this until middle age. For him, this person was Sawyer, whom he met while waiting to board Concorde. When he speaks of their relationship, he is very matter-of-fact, as though it's the only absolute in his universe of questions. "It felt as though I met the person I was meant for. That all the weird things about you finally seem to have a purpose. As though they were waiting for this particular conjunction. And then everything is different."

Nichols was 35 years old when he received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director for Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He didn't win but Elizabeth Taylor took home Best Actress. Richard Burton had said about his directing: "He conspires with you to get your best."

He won the following year, in 1967, for The Graduate. He was subsequently nominated again for Silkwood and Working Girl, and shared a nomination for Best Picture for James Ivory's The Remains of the Day, on which he was producer. But unlike today, where the American dream is no longer to be president but to direct, in the late 1960s his early success was considered a phenomenon. "People have an opinion of something you've done. And they assume you have a high opinion of it. But mostly you agree with them."

Is he hinting at dissatisfaction, so often the by-product of the truly creative mind?

He clarifies: "If someone says that was a crappy take to do, you can't go through life saying, 'Oh yeah, wasn't it? It was disgusting. I hate myself for that.' But that is what you're thinking a lot of the time. I'm not proud of that."

In Closer, given the nature of the subject matter and the rawness of the feelings it explores, his job, he feels, is to scratch away the surface and get to the core. The film took nine weeks to shoot in London, and he presents the city lovingly, glistening with light in the most magical way. About this he says: "I didn't want them to look dead. There just isn't a lot of sun."

He has lived in London on and off, but never for very long. "I lived there many years ago.